Embeddedness and sequentiality in social media

Over the last decade, there has been an explosion of work around social media within CSCW. A range of perspectives have been applied to the use of social media, which we characterise as aggregate, actor-focussed or a combination. We outline the opportunities for a perspective informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA)—an orientation that has been influential within CSCW, yet has only rarely been applied to social media use. EMCA approaches can complement existing perspectives through articulating how social media is embedded in the everyday lives of its users and how sequentiality of social media use organises this embeddedness. We draw on a corpus of screen and ambient audio recordings of mobile device use to show how EMCA research is generative for understanding social media through concepts such as adjacency pairs, sequential context, turn allocation / speaker selection, and repair

Embeddedness and sequentiality in social media

Over the last decade, there has been an explosion of work around social media within CSCW. A range of perspectives have been applied to the use of social media, which we characterise as aggregate, actor-focussed or a combination. We outline the opportunities for a perspective informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA)—an orientation that has been influential within CSCW, yet has only rarely been applied to social media use. EMCA approaches can complement existing perspectives through articulating how social media is embedded in the everyday lives of its users and how sequentiality of social media use organises this embeddedness. We draw on a corpus of screen and ambient audio recordings of mobile device use to show how EMCA research is generative for understanding social media through concepts such as adjacency pairs, sequential context, turn allocation / speaker selection, and repair

Narrative Self-Reference and the Assessment of Knowledge

The concept of narrative self-reference incorporates selected aspects of literary theory into the theory of self-referential systems. Since cybernetics and systems theory focus mainly on computer-aided metaphors and information, the narrative approach provides a better insight into meaning. Narrative self-reference is the simplified narrative self-image that reflects the system-environment relationship and thereby stabilizes the system. Because the narrative is continuously re-written, continued and entangled in different practices, it provides the flexibility against new and disappointed expectations, and the stability for accountability and planning. Theoretical examples of further institutional, technical, authoritarian and pragmatic dependencies for the constitution of psychic and social systems with means of narrative self-reference are discussed. In summary, this article reflects the negotiating power of narratives by creating system boundaries for collaboration and a common ground for the assessment of knowledge. From this perspective, “post-truth” is not a lack of scientific authority, but more a lack of the virtue of an adequate dealing with narratives

Voice interfaces in everyday life

Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) are becoming ubiquitously available, being embedded both into everyday mobility via smartphones, and into the life of the home via ‘assistant’ devices. Yet, exactly how users of such devices practically thread that use into their everyday social interactions remains underexplored. By collecting and studying audio data from month-long deployments of the Amazon Echo in participants’ homes—informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis—our study documents the methodical practices of VUI users, and how that use is accomplished in the complex social life of the home. Data we present shows how the device is made accountable to and embedded into conversational settings like family dinners where various simultaneous activities are being achieved. We discuss how the VUI is finely coordinated with the sequential organisation of talk. Finally, we locate implications for the accountability of VUI interaction, request and response design, and raise conceptual challenges to the notion of designing ‘conversational’ interfaces

Developing digital literacy in construction management education: a design thinking led approach

Alongside the digital innovations in AEC (Architectural, Engineering and Construction) practice, are calls for a new type of digital literacy, including a new information-based literacy informed by creativity, critical analysis and the theoretical and practical knowledge of the construction profession. This paper explores the role of design thinking and the promotion of abductive problem situations when developing digital literacies in construction education. The impacts of advanced digital modelling technologies on construction management practices and education are investigated before an examination of design thinking, the role of abductive reasoning and the rise of normative models of design thinking workflows. The paper then explores the role that design thinking can play in the development of new digital literacies in contemporary construction studies. A three-part framework for the implementation of a design thinking approach to construction is presented. The paper closes with a discussion of the importance of models of design thinking for learning and knowledge production, emphasising how construction management education can benefit from them

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Maniat Laments as Narratives: Forms and Norms of Entextualization

This thesis studies Maniat laments as narratives in folkloristic contexts. It focuses on a manuscript collection of Maniat laments which was compiled around 1930-35 by Ioannis Strilakos (a philologist from Gerolimenas, 1911-1949); it also draws on data from ethnographic fieldwork and published collections. Texts from the collection that refer to killings or abductions (sensational laments) have been compiled in a digital corpus following the latest standards in textual encoding in order to facilitate textual analyses. The study proposes an eclectic language-focused approach to verbal art following recent trends in the study of oral poetics (Bauman and Briggs 1990) and narrative analysis (Labov 1997, Ochs and Capps 2001) brought together by critical perspectives on discourse and culture in sociolinguistics (Blommaert 2005). First of all, the analysis identifies an ethnopoetic-narrative patterning and its variations in relation to prototypical structures of oral experience narratives. The identified prototypical structures are viewed along a set of narrativity dimensions which define their conventionalisation and entextualisabilityt on a continuum that encompasses laments performed in both ritual and non-ritual contexts. Secondly, this study explores the way norms of language have been deployed in practices of recording, selecting, editing, transcribing and publishing laments either emphasising their 'canonical' textual shape or adding new meanings through orthopraxies. The latter are illustrated in the hybrid register in which the texts in the manuscript collection have been recorded, pointing to synergies between orality and literacy norms and revealing the complexity of the natural histories of verbal art

Subject to change : the composition course syllabus and intersections of authority, genre, and community.

This dissertation is an investigation of composition\u27s disciplinary conceptions of the course syllabus, from its often-relegated position as textual object to a more interactive and complex subject of our discipline. The course syllabus is an example of an occluded genre, operating behind the scenes while serving commitments and obligations of a dominant ideology. This position as an occluded genre offers opportunities for composition instructors to thoroughly examine what our syllabi are really doing. By further exploring how we think about course syllabi, we can contribute to the development of our own teaching, as well as the teaching styles and practices of new teachers of composition. This dissertation draws on theories of power, authority, genre, and discourse community construction in composition scholarship, as well as a study component, in which I have collected course syllabi from graduate student teachers. These individuals, graduate student teachers, hold multiple stakeholder positions in the university, and operate as teacher and student simultaneously. This dissertation argues that syllabi allow us to further understand the praxis of composition, providing foundations by which new individuals entering the field frame their pedagogical goals and initial representations of themselves as teachers. This dissertation is divided into five chapters. Chapter One reviews published scholarship that often frames the course syllabus as an inert object, a transparently instrumental genre. This chapter also furthers the understanding of the syllabus as a material and ideological subject of composition, an inherently narrative subject in interpretations of its construction and dissemination, and a subject bound up in the embeddedness of multiple audiences. Chapter Two examines developments of theories of power, authority, and genre, and explores the extent to which the course syllabus serves professional academic discourse. Chapter Three analyzes implications of the data collection processes, specifically the reluctance of individuals to participate in this study, reflecting similar departmental and institutional tensions between what is considered publicly available and what is considered more privately guarded. Chapter Four studies sample composition course syllabi collected from graduate students in Rhetoric and Composition programs, using these documents to study how, when, and under what circumstances graduate student instructors make authority, genre, and discourse community formations implicit or explicit in their syllabi. Chapter Five argues that these reexaminations of the course syllabus\u27s place in the discipline of composition can help refashion the graduate student teaching practicum

Some conversational challenges of talking with machines

A surge of interest in the capabilities of so-called 'conversational' technologies—both from research and industrial contexts—furnishes CSCW and HCI with opportunities to enrich and leverage its historic connection to conversation analysis (and relatedly, ethnomethodology) in novel ways. This paper explores a number of preliminary interactional troubles one might encounter when 'talking to' conversational agents, and in doing so sketches out possible routes forward in the empirical study of agents as collaborative technologies, as well as touching on further conceptual challenges that face research in this area